The dates to note are January 4th to 10th, and during that time you can see countless hours of entertaining speedruns, TASes, races, challenges and things that never happened before.

Important links

Schedule: Found here: http://gamesdonequick.com/schedule - this schedule will automagically adjust to your timezone, so you don't need to calculate anything. Except for when you can sleep. But you can't sleep.

Watch it at: The event is streamed at Twitch, but the marathon event has a specific page that you should use, which is at: http://gamesdonequick.com/ (once the marathon starts, will have stream and chat and all that fancy stuff). The Twitch page is http://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick but only use that if the main page shits itself.

If you want to watch in your media player of choice, you can use Livestreamer. Here is a short guide, courtesy of debdrup (who's also offered to help anyone with issues. He can usually be found in #speedruns):

debdrup posted:

Windows users can find an easy-to-use installer here.
Mac users can run sudo easy_install livestreamer from a terminal window.
If you're a Linux or Unix nerd you can usually find livestreamer pre-compiled in the package system (pkg, apt, pip, or similar).

If its using your OS' default player, and you want it to use something different, what you need to do is set the player location in the config file to use your favorite media player.Alternatively you can just set up file associations properly.

The config file can be found in:
Windows: %APPDATA%\livestreamer\livestreamerrc
Unix-like systems: ~/.livestreamerrc or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/livestreamer/config

This file should contain many options, but one of the first should be something like this:
player=“absolute-path/to/mediaplayer”

Just change this to the absolute path of your favorite media player, remember to remove the hash (#) in front of it, and save it.
Open a command prompt or terminal, enter livestreamer twitch.tv/gamesdonequick best, and that's it. You can replace best with low/medium/high if needed.

There's also a French restream here with its own schedule. Additionally, a Spanish restream can be found here.

Official recordings will go up eventually. A list of timestamped VODs exists here.

Chatting: Twitch chat is best not used, as it's not going to be the official chat channel. It will be under heavy load either way, and might turn to slow and subscribers only mode if it gets too bad. Instead, the official chat is as usual on IRC.
Server: irc.quakenet.org
Channel: #sdamarathonDirect linkQuakenet Webchat (Mibbit will not work)

There's also a SA speedrun channel that you can use for slightly slower conversation:
Server: irc.synirc.net
Channel: #speedrunsDirect linkMibbit Webchat

Put some clothes on:TheYetee, as always, has a variety of cool shirts you can buy for $11 (or $13 for the larger sizes) during the whole event! A percentage of the profit from these shirts will be donated to the charity towards the end of the event.

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AGDQ: What it is

All money collected during Awesome Games Done Quick goes directly to the Prevent Cancer Foundation, with nothing going to anyone participating in the event. It's 100% charity. All attendees pay for their own travel and living expenses.

SDA has hosted several successful speedrunning marathons in the past - AGDQ2013 raised over $448,000 for PCF, and SGDQ2013 raised $255,000 for Doctors Without Borders - after which it became official that SDA's different speedrunning marathons had, in total donations going to four different charities, collected over a million dollars. Last year, AGDQ2014 alone raised another million dollars, and SGDQ2014 topped that off with another $718,000.

As the event grows each year, more work is put into improving the quality of the stream. There's always going to be some hiccups, though, because everyone working with the event is only human. Well, except for TASBot. (despite what you might have heard, UraniumAnchor is, in fact, not a machine.)

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Donations and how they work

SDA marathons up to and including half of AGDQ2013 used a donation widget known as ChipIn. ChipIn crashed and burned horribly during AGDQ2013, so resident coding superhero SMK reinvented the wheel donation system, creating a standalone system that has been used since, not only by SDA events but by other community marathons as well.

You will be able to leave a comment with your donation. During earlier marathons, all comments were read out on stream, but as more and more donations come in each year, it has become impossible to do so. Therefore, there will be a filtering system in place. In general, this is the idea:

quote:

-The program should auto-filter donations that are less than a dollar, but in case if one slips through, filter it out.

-Some people do not want their names read out loud when they donate. There will be an anonymous flag you can check so that the donation reader doesn't read their name by accident (like we have done often in the past).

-Donations insulting someone should be filtered out.

-If a donation is solely twitch faces, hashtags, or just generally spam, then filter it out.

-On that note, if someone donates a small amount of money just to write a mountain of text, then filter it out. We'll be busy enough reading short donation comments. The only exception we should make for mountains of text is...

-Personal stories relating to our cause should be read.

-If a donation comment is creative and funny then it should be read. Just FYI, while some people might find twich faces funny, they're certainly not creative.

There is also a scrolling ticker for donation comments on the main page. No, they're not going to put that on the stream.

One of the more popular things to drive donations are the donation incentives and the raffle prizes.

When you donate, you can have your donation go towards one of the many donation incentives that are available for different games. This involves naming characters, selecting different modes, in some cases even choosing which game will be played. All the incentives are available to view on this page of the tracker.

There's always prizes to win, and you can see a list of all of them in the tracker as well. Prizes come in two categories - regular and grand. Regular prizes you get entered into the drawing for if you make a donation of the minimum amount specified, mostly between $5 and $25 with a single outlier at $50, during the specified game or game block. Grand prizes you get one chance to win per specified donated throughout the entire event, up to three tickets for each person. At the time of writing, the grand prize or prizes have not yet been put up, but they'll be there. This is another space you can watch.

Now, what is there to win?

Some amazing poo poo, that's what. FOR EXAMPLE

3D Blue Falcon perler:

Kaizo Mario repro cart:

This thing (this is the $50 one):

Santos perler:

Triforce pint glass:

A keyblade:

This suave motherfucker:

And a whole lot of other cool stuffs. Just check the list in the tracker.

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FAQ:Q: What runs should I watch?
A: There is no one answer to this question. Anyone you ask will give a different answer. But nine out of ten people will tell you to make sure to tune in for AwfulGDQ. (the tenth guy never gets invited to the cool parties.)

Some of the runs that turn out to be the most amazing will be listed in the second post eventually.

Q: Will ____ be there this year?
A: Check the schedule. If they're not listed as a runner or commentator, it doesn't really matter if they're there or not. It's probably a wise idea to avoid bringing up some of the more controversial runners/commentators from the past.

Q: So did you hear this juice piece of speedrunner drama-
A: OH MY GOD SHUT THE gently caress UP.

Okay, no, really, let's not do that this year. In the past, we've had rumours, accusations, shady tweets, unverified pastebins and all sorts of poo poo about who did what with whom and why. Keep that poo poo out of the thread, oh my god. This is not the place for that. Last year I had to close the thread because people wouldn't shut the gently caress up and I will do it again if necessary.

Q: Why isn't ____ on the schedule?
A: Because there's simply not enough room for it. AGDQ has grown so much that it's not even remotely possible to let everyone who wants to attend have a game on the schedule anymore. There's going to be hundreds of people there, and while not all of them are runners, many games and people have had to be cut from the schedule to fit it into a weeklong marathon. There have been talks about expanding it to two streams, but that idea seems to have been mostly abandoned.

Q: Why didn't they read my donation comment?
A: We went over that already, but in short, because they get so insanely many comments that it's not possible to read them all.

Q: Where is this happening? It looks different from last year.
A: AGDQs up to and including 2013 took place in the 4H Center in Maryland, but due to its growth it had to relocate. AGDQ2014 took place at the Crowne Plaza Dulles Hotel, and AGDQ2015 will be brought to you from the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport Hotel.

Q: This OP looks like a copy of last year's OP.
A: It pretty much is because I'm a lazy rear end. Also, that's not a frequent question, shut up.

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And that's that. If there's any other information that you think should go in this here OP, let me know.

I know this is the most nitpicky thing in the world, but the framerate on the last two or so marathons has been a bit choppy, at least for 60 fps games. It's a shame watching games like Super Mario 3D World or F-Zero GX that normally have a rock-solid framerate looking less spectacular because the source video is frequently dropping to 30 fps.

It happens in the official videos put up on archive.org as well, but now that 60 fps videos can be uploaded to Youtube it will be easier to appreciate how smooth these games can look.

Looking forward to a lot this year. The Awful Games block is full of weird and interesting games (and segued both into and out of gracefully), and we've got F-Zero GX returning, which is always amazing to watch. Apparently they've also just recently found a few new ways to break Escape Goat 2, so that run may be a bit shorter and funnier than it might have been otherwise.

Getting Livestreamer set up in advance so I have AGDQ playing on my TV on the other side of the room pretty much the whole week.

Why is there a Fire Emblem game scheduled? The last one was a catastrophe, and as a fan of the series, FE games have to be some of the most uninteresting speedruns in the world to actually watch, even if the planning behind them can be interesting if you know the games.

Why is there a Fire Emblem game scheduled? The last one was a catastrophe, and as a fan of the series, FE games have to be some of the most uninteresting speedruns in the world to actually watch, even if the planning behind them can be interesting if you know the games.

Is it a different one? Is it a different runner? I mean there's always a few longer runs and not everything is amazing, but just because one guy screws up in one game of an entire series doesn't mean they should outright blacklist the franchise.

But if it's the same guy and the same game that's probably a bad idea yeah.

In cases like that I always hope there's some weird bugs to exploit that let you blow through the game in strange ways.

FWIW, TekWar the game is based on TekWar the television series, not TekWar the series of ghostwritten novels supposedly by Willian Shatner. But that means that the cutscenes used the television production...

As a bonus, the Tekwar game was made by Capstone, the incredibly mediocre FPS studio behind Corridor 7 and the Witchaven games, using a version of the BUILD engine (Duke Nukem 3D) that was so early it doesn't have sloped surfaces.

Hey, we might as well chat up which runs we're looking forward to. Besides the Awful Games Done Quick block which is inevitably packed with the most interesting runs of the most interesting games (thanks, but I've seen Mega Man run dozens of times... Trio the Punch? Sign me up!), I am eagerly awaiting Crazy Taxi because it strikes me as a pretty complicated game to run, Jedi Knight since it is sure to be insanely glitchy, Descent because I want to know if Dramamine is involved, and Vanquish because it's a crazy enough game on its own that a one-handed run must be amazing. Also, the arcade block is a cool addition though I'm not sure the game choices are going to be wildly entertaining...

The Tetris Grand Master one will definitely be worth watching. I've seen speedruns of it in the past and the people performing them cannot be human. I mean, this is the kind of stuff you'd see in a TAS.

Not sure how the Isaac challenge will work though. Is it simply first floor to Mom's Heart/It Lives/Mega Satan ASAP?

Snake Rattle n' Roll is the game I'm most hyped for. It's a fuckin' dope game and it's being run by two awesome runners, so it'll be awesome. The FF7 run will be great, I can't wait to see people's reactions to it because it gets really crazy. The entire Nintendo block starting with Legend of Zelda and ending with NSMB:Wii will all be great, they're all excellent games that have really fun runs to watch. The Morrowind all main quest run should be excellent because that game is so goddamn broken, I can't even imagine what will happen during that run but it'll surely be glorious. SMRPG is a run I've seen a million times and it never gets old since the game is so lovable.

But seriously, Snake Rattle n' Roll is the poo poo, I'm stoked to see it in the schedule.

This is going to be awesome, also can't wait to see the TASbot mystery game.

but yea, people are going to talk about drama and TC isn't a minimod just because he created the thread so for the people that are annoyed about drama discussion just remember that if you respond and complain about that poo poo it just draws the discussion out

I'm looking forward to Battleblock Theater. That game is vicious enough to 100% solo, and PJ and Mecha Richter are doing a 100% co-op run. Plus the narrator's going to be on Skype.

I have no idea how Binding of Isaac is going to work. I don't think they're playing Rebirth (since it only came out in November), so unless someone's figured out a hack they'll be on different seeds. It's appeared at a *GDQ before and that was a trainwreck - hopefully it will go better this time.

I'm looking forward to Battleblock Theater. That game is vicious enough to 100% solo, and PJ and Mecha Richter are doing a 100% co-op run. Plus the narrator's going to be on Skype.

I have no idea how Binding of Isaac is going to work. I don't think they're playing Rebirth (since it only came out in November), so unless someone's figured out a hack they'll be on different seeds. It's appeared at a *GDQ before and that was a trainwreck - hopefully it will go better this time.

battleblock theatre co-op runs are great, I watched them on twitch do some runs

The FE8 run is more uncomfortable than anything. The dude just seems so apologetic and sad by the end, and not in a funny way.

Yeah, I feel that. He didn't seem like he failed to practice his game any but it kinda looked like he got really boned on the RNG. Maybe it was a lack of foresight to put that game forward in the first place but drat it wasn't a funny trainwreck, it was just heartbreaking.

Yeah, I feel that. He didn't seem like he failed to practice his game any but it kinda looked like he got really boned on the RNG. Maybe it was a lack of foresight to put that game forward in the first place but drat it wasn't a funny trainwreck, it was just heartbreaking.

I don't care for 99% of RPG runs to begin with; even when they go off the rails like they should, there's often a lot of repetition and down time which winds up going on for hours. The Fire Emblem games strike me as just about the worst RPG out there for an interesting speedrun. I'm sure it can be done well, it just can't be done repeatedly and on demand like is necessary for a marathon.